


Your Yawning Grave

by whalesong_and_bones



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Bad omens, F/F, F/M, Gen, The Outsider works in subtle ways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24902521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whalesong_and_bones/pseuds/whalesong_and_bones
Summary: Delilah has forgotten who she has made an enemy out of. Perhaps she needs a reminder.-or-The Outsider leaves omens of doom.
Relationships: Breanna Ashworth/Delilah Copperspoon, Brenna Ashworth/Delilah Copperspoon/Luca Abele, Delilah Copperspoon & The Outsider, Luca Abele/Delilah Copperspoon
Comments: 1
Kudos: 33





	Your Yawning Grave

**Author's Note:**

> There is a distinct lack of fics dealing with Delilah's and The Outsider's relationship. Cause, you know, when someone unqualified wants your job, you may have some opinions on it.
> 
> This was written instead of using the precious night hours to sleep.

She had just finished mixing her dyes when Katya, her youngest Tyvian recruit, ran into her studio. Her face, so expressive in anguish, anxiety, fear.

"What has happened?" Delilah asked, clutching the young woman's hands. "Are the Overseers back for more?"

"No, Delilah" Katya replied, her soft features creased in worry, "Your roses have been poisoned."

She would later understand the young Tyvian's apprehension, upon entering the garden's of the Tower. Her beautiful roses, fed on the blood of the fallen Overseers, have been slowly taking over the grounds, slithering their way across the gazebo. At least, that has been the case last night.

The garden lay desecrated, the soil itself excreting a slick fluorescent oil. The overwhelming stench of the purified whale oil permeated every single breath Delilah took. Her roses, blood red, where dissolving like slugs cruelly dipped in salt. A deep, keening sob threatened to overtake her.

"Find out who did this and bring them to me," Delilah commanded to the gathered crowd of witches, "If they are not afraid of such brazen display of disloyalty to their rightful Empress, they will not be afraid to experience my wrath."

In her rage, she would execute a dozen of people, everyone pleading innocent.

\--------------------

Delilah had been trouble sleeping for the last couple of weeks, and she was unsure as to why.

In the months that followed her stake to the crown and coronation, she had appropriated Emily's chambers. How could anyone resist the grand bed covered in the finest silks of the Empire, begging to be used by her and her bed-fellows? Luca and Breanna had certainly enjoyed sharing it with her. And so did her acolytes, on occasion.

No, it did not seem to be the bed, or the room that was the matter. Rather, it was the scratching between the walls which drove her mad. Rats, she thought bitterly. The sound was reminiscent of her hovel during the plague, where she barricaded herself with Breanna, painting and plotting, waiting out the horror. The rats would scratch angrily under the floorboards, in the ceiling, their hunger matched only by Delilah's desire for revenge.

But that was more than a decade ago now, and she has been back long enough to notice a distinct lack of noise during the night. Was the plague back? Was the decaying of Dunwall bringing the rats back from where they came? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter, she tugged the covers snuggly around her, the blue silk contrasting against the pale skin of her hands, when the world will be as it should be, the rat plague would have never happened. She closed her eyes and tried to find some semblance of rest.

The next day, she would mix her paints poorly, and the colours of _The World As It Should Be_ would run like tears on a courtesan's face.

\--------------------

Delilah could not shake the feeling that the petrified body of Corvo was watching her.

She had checked her magic work thoroughly, inspected every single crease and curve of his body, and could not find a reason to believe he was capable of freeing himself and, Void forbid, move his eyes. Yet, any time she was in the throne room, she felt as if a thousand gazes where staring her down, judging her, and finding her wanting. In the end, she had chalked it up to her persistent inability to find rest.

She lifted her eyes up from the painting to dart a quick look to the windows when she saw it - ravens, perched on the sills, as if frozen. Tens of beady black eyes, not bigger than a pearl, staring directly at her. Paranoia, and lack of sleep, Delilah chanted to herself, as she fled to find her sisters and order them the doors and windows barred. Paranoia and lack of sleep.

She could've sworn Corvo's frozen grimace had turned into a smug smirk.

\--------------------

The rune sat cold and quiet in her hands. It didn't use to be like this.

Before she was trapped in the Void, the whalebones and bonecharms would croon a gentle lullaby. She could hear it through anything - walls, rushing water, lead lockboxes. The magical objects would not be refused an audience, even if some of their enchantments would be left unappreciated by Delilah herself. Whenever she'd touch them, they'd feel warm, like a stone left warm by the embrace of the sun. Their lovely melodies would swell in a crescendo, voices sighing in adoration when He'd appear...

But that was long ago, now. The last time she had seen the Outsider in any capacity was in one of Sokolov's paintings, the one she found locked in the safe room. "A pile of smoking ash now," Delilah stated plainly to the empty room, stroking the rune's surface.

"What a pity then, it was it was my favourite drawing of his," a voice replied from behind her, deceptively youthful, carefully lilted derision plain, "Sokolov certainly enjoys trying to capture the likeness of his subjects to the most accurate brush stroke. That piece actually required a little bit of imagination."

Delilah whipped her body around to face the intruder. The Outsider was casually seated on the, right leg crossed on top of the other, running his gaze over Corvo's petrified form.

"You," Delilah hissed, slowly stalking towards the slouching deity, "Finally gathered up the courage to address me directly?"

The Outsider turned his sight onto the witch. He did not look as she remembered him. Gone was his cold, ageless face. Gone was his pale, corpse-like complexion - his skin looked sallow and sickly, but not dead. The barest beginnings of crow's feet where forming, like vines overtaking an unscalable wall. He did not look like the God from her memories, he was just a dying man. Delilah felt the need to gloat.

"Oh, have you come to beg for mercy on the day of my ascension?" the witch smiled, her grin splitting her face. She could not contain herself. "All your power, all your knowledge, and you did nothing to stop me from taking destiny by the horns." In her joy, Delilah did not notice her voice peaking in a shrill scream. "You were granted your gift because of superstitious consciences of primitives. I will take your place because I deserve it."

The God did not seem fazed by her. His unblinking gaze slid past her, as if he was watching something past the locked doors of the throne room. "Twenty years ago, I marked you because your desire to achieve something greater than yourself was interesting. Certainly petty and superficial at times, but commendable. In the years passed, you have turned predictable, boring. Just another power-hungry shark who has been blinded by their own hubris."

Delilah could feel the blood under her skin begin to boil. How could he not see? Nobody has ever managed to touch the Outsider in his most sensitive organs. While lost in the Void, she has found his essence, and she has made herself drunk on it. "For all of your long diatribes and talks of disappointment, you are incapable of lifting a finger against me." Delilah wrapped her hands around his pale throat, around the puckered flesh of his wound. She felt as if the Void itself was at her command - the mark burned deliciously inside her gloves. "You should be the one begging on your knees for mercy," she stroked his jaw with her thumb, "as your rightful replacement."

He turned his sight back to her, his horrible black-on-black eyes roving over her face. Finally, he said "I do believe you misunderstand the way I operate, Delilah." The corners of his lips lifted, ever so slightly. "Even Sokolov, for all his blindness, could recognize subtlety."

Before Delilah had the opportunity to apply even the slightest bit of pressure onto the Outsider's neck, he had vanished in a cloud of obsidian shards.

Her screams could be felt reverberating through the entire Tower.

A shadow would slip through a balcony and ready their blade.


End file.
